Is There Still a We?

We are living through an epidemic of machloket. It is in the group chats. The comment sections. The Shabbos table that changes the second someone mentions politics, or whatever is left unsaid because everyone is afraid of the argument it might start. We have more places to argue than ever, and fewer habits for doing it well.

I can think of friends and family members who no longer speak because of a fight neither of them could fully explain a year later. You probably can too. Which is why it should trouble me how easily I can recognize the problem everywhere and in everyone except in myself.

In the moment, I am always the reasonable one. The patient one. The one being misunderstood. This should worry me more than it does. Because doesn’t everyone feel this way?

From the inside, every argument feels righteous. Nobody wakes up in the morning and decides to become a baal machloket. We all believe we are standing up for something that matters.

Korach believed it too. We forget this about him. He did not stand up and say, “I am jealous.” He did not say, “I want kavod.” He actually said something beautiful. Kol ha’eidah kulam kedoshim. The whole nation is holy. So who gave you the right to stand above the rest?

There was truth in the sentence. That is what made it dangerous. If Korach had been obviously petty, the Torah would not need to warn us about him. We can all spot “petty.” What we cannot always spot is the argument that borrows its language from holiness, fairness, and truth. Those are the arguments that pull people in.

So the Torah gives us a test, and it hides it inside a single word. The Mishnah in Avot says there are two kinds of machloket. The model of the good one is between Hillel and Shammai. The model of the bad one is Korach. But the Mishnah does something strange. It does not say Korach and Moshe. It says Korach v’adato. Korach and his followers.

The good argument gets two names. Hillel and Shammai. Two people standing across from each other. The bad argument gets one name and a crowd. Because Korach was never really arguing with Moshe. To argue with a person, you have to be willing to hear him. You have to stand in front of him and admit, even a little, that he may be holding something true. Korach had no interest in this. He was busy gathering people behind himself. A real, healthy argument faces someone. A counterfeit one builds a following.

Hillel knew the difference, and the Gemara tells us how. We follow Hillel not because he was sharper, but because he taught Shammai’s words before his own. He did not begin by defeating Shammai. He began by proving that he had heard him. That may be the price of a real argument.

So the next time I am sure I am right, I want to stop and ask one plain question first. Can I state the other side so clearly that the person I disagree with would hear it and say, yes, that is exactly what I meant? It is not the only test, but it is the first. If I cannot pass it, I am not arguing with him anymore. I am arguing with a version of him I made up, and that one always loses.

But most of the time, this is not about being Korach. It is about being part of the crowd. You and I are almost never the people in the actual fight. We are the ones getting the screenshot. The forward. The group chat with the sides already chosen and our outrage helpfully pre-loaded. We were never in the room. We only got the piece someone chose to show us.

So I have started doing one small thing. When the screenshot lands in my phone, I try not to forward it. It is a low bar. I clear it about half the time.

We become the adat Korach, and we sign on for reasons that often have very little to do with the matter itself. Every machloket gathers people who were not really there for the original fight. Some simply love a fight. Others are carrying an older wound and have been waiting for an argument close enough to climb back into. Their pain is real. The argument is just not the place it gets healed.

So before I sign on, whether I am in the fight or only watching from the crowd, I have started asking what the argument wants from me. Does it want me to understand something, or only to hate someone? To weigh the truth, or to pick a side before I know anything? An argument that cannot tolerate complexity is usually not looking for the truth. It is looking for recruits.

I also try to ask what the argument is actually about. Rashi asks about Korach, Mah ra’ah l’shtut zo. What did he see that made him throw himself into something this foolish? Korach was not a fool. He was a serious man whose whole field of vision had narrowed to one slight, one grievance, one thing he believed he was owed. Often, that is what sits under a fight that will not die. A person is sure he is defending a principle, and underneath the principle is an old hurt. A time he was not heard. A time he was made to feel like nothing.

If the fight is really about the hurt, winning the fight will not touch it. You can take every point and watch the other person grow angrier, because you answered the argument he made and missed the one he meant. So the most useful move is usually the least satisfying. Get out of the crowd. Have the conversation nobody is watching. One person. One room. No audience. Korach made his demand in front of everyone. Moshe fell on his face.

And then, I have to ask what will the argument leave behind? If I win this, what will we actually have? More understanding? More trust? A problem solved? Or only a winner, a loser, and one more thing between us that does not come back. Korach’s machloket held nothing up. It burned, it collapsed, and it left the room colder than it found it.

We are going to argue. We always have. That was never the question. The question is what is leave standing when the argument ends. Not who won but what and who survived. A friendship that held. A shul that is still one shul. A table we can all sit at next Shabbos.

Hillel and Shammai disagreed about almost everything, including who was allowed to marry whom. Their children married each other anyway. The machloket lasted because the people did. That is what sofa l’hitkayem means. Not merely the argument that lasts, but the argument that holds something up.

So the test was never only who is right. It is whether, when the noise dies down, there is still a we.